


Backless, Speechless

by tielan



Series: Meeting Halfway [20]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dancing, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-13 12:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9123781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: If armed terrorists took the gala hostage, Maria could have her hands on a weapon within ten seconds.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [florahart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/gifts).



> Day 19: _in formal wear_.

 “Well,” says Clint from where he’s leaning against the marble-topped side table, “you sure clean up pretty, Cap.”

“Frankly, I’d rather be in a knock-down, drag-out fight,” Steve confesses.

“Yeah, you and me both.” Barton adjusts his cufflinks. “Think of it as a mission.”

“What’s the objective?”

“Well, I don’t know about you, but mine is to get out of tonight alive.” Clint shrugs and smiles and saunters off through the lounge, only pausing to exchange words with Pepper Potts, who’s just emerged from one of the elevators. The conversation is short, but whatever Pepper says brings a rueful smile to Clint’s mouth, and he holds up his hands in surrender before continuing on his merry way out.

Steve stands as Pepper descends the stairs. “You look lovely, Pepper.”

“You clean up rather nicely yourself, Steve.” She accepts his kiss on the cheek. “Are you ready to head out?”

“Just waiting on Maria.”

“Yes, about that... She asked me to fetch you, because she’s gotten tied up with work.” Pepper’s expression matches the way Steve feels about that. “Yes, I know she works too hard, and yes, I’m trying to find an aide to help her manage the workload. But it’s not easy. There’s a lot of things that only she can do.”

“Or a lot of things that she just won’t let someone else take over.” He regrets the grumble as soon as it’s uttered. Pepper’s no fool, and she and Maria are friends; she knows exactly what Maria is like and how impossible it would be to change the habits that a lifetime of working global intelligence have instilled in her. “So you’re my escort to the function?”

“Or you’re mine.” She holds up an arm, ready to hook it into his, and instinctive courtesy has Steve tucking it into his before he really thinks about it. Not that he’d refuse; Pepper’s too nice for that, and if they’re heading out, then it’s only polite. “I promise, it’s just temporary. I’ll relinquish you to Maria as soon as she turns up.”

“If she turns up.”

Pepper doesn’t seem to find his cynicism about Maria’s workaholic tendencies disconcerting; she just smiles. “Maria will be there. I sent Darcy Lewis with her dress and accessories to hurry her up.”

 

Darcy Lewis or no, it’s nearly two hours in before Steve finally spots Maria amidst the crowds.

She’s in red, dancing with a man who seems to be doing his level best to make her laugh. Steve has to take a moment to gather his thoughts in the middle of a conversation that kept flowing past him when his brain stopped.

The red isn’t vivisected scarlet but a deeper, richer shade that shimmers and shifts over the long lines of her body – like someone poured a bottle of red wine over her bare skin and it formed into fabric. She’s grinning at the man who’s dancing with her with an open, no-holds-barred smile that lights up her face, and Steve feels a pang of jealousy. Not that he thinks she’s betraying him by dancing or smiling with someone else, just that she’s not hiding herself, comfortable in her own skin with a friend by her side, and he’s stuck halfway across the room unable to go to her because they’re still ‘private’.

Steve drags his attention back to the group he’s in; it’s not these people’s fault that he’s just lost interest in their conversation, and he _is_ interested in the topic they’re discussing – the political situation in Eastern Europe right now, in the wake of the Sokovian situation. But for the next thirty minutes before he manages to extract himself and make a subtle and roundabout way across the room, he has that wine-coloured dress and its wearer in the periphery of his vision and it’s driving him just a little crazy.

She’s chatting with a Stark Industries director and her husband when Steve comes up, shakes hands, and apologises for stealing Maria for a dance, but she’s been promising him one for this age, and he’s curious to see if she can dance as well as she runs security for Stark Industries.

“That wasn’t a bad lie,” she murmurs as he leads her onto the dance floor and slides an arm around her waist—and encounters bare skin.

Steve pauses. Apparently the wine-fluid dress has no back, leaving her spine bare down to her waist. Beneath the fabric it’s just skin. Maybe stockings. Probably a little scrap of lace covering her – the kind that’s just a little bit rough, so when he presses against it with his tongue or fingers...

Best not to think about that right now.

“I practised it,” he manages as he takes her hand in his and gets his brain out of his trousers. “I wanted some time without other people trying to get our attention, because I haven’t seen you all week.”

“You’re being overdramatic. You saw me last night.”

“I think ‘saw’ is the wrong word. You never turned on the light when you came in.”

“That hardly stopped your hands. Or your mouth. Or any other part of you.”

Somehow, she manages to say all this in a perfectly low, even voice, setting Steve’s senses alight. Her expression is polite and a little distant, but only if you don’t know the look on her eyes which is pure mischief. It’s a challenge, God help him. And Steve has never quite been able to resist a challenge, let alone Maria issuing one.

He leans in a little, and murmurs, “I can find my way well enough in the dark, Maria, but I _like_ looking at you.”

“You probably need your eyes checked.”

The dismissal of herself and everything that she is casual, unthinking. It annoys Steve, even though he knows Maria doesn’t notice self-deprecation anymore. It would annoy him less if he thought it was deliberate – a cry for attention and affection. But this is something that she’s internalised long before they stated this relationship, or the Avengers assembled, or she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s a recording that runs on repeat and which she’s only recently learned to disrupt, and even then not all the time.

“You need to kickstart your self-confidence.”

“My self-confidence is perfectly functional—” She breaks off, because he’s started stroking his fingertips across her back, in and out of the long dip of her spine. “ _Steve._ ”

“Do you know what I see when I look at you?” He doesn’t wait for her answer. “I see someone who can marshal the Avengers with a single call. Who’s trusted by Nick Fury when he barely trusts anyone. I see someone who can trek through the Tibetan Alps for six days in barely-adequate snow gear and still make a quip as she comes up the ramp of the Quinjet sent to pick her up, and a woman who can turn heads with a dress that’s made more than one man wish he had the courage to come up and ask you for a dance.”

He keeps his voice low, He doesn’t lean in, doesn’t pull her up against him. She’s a woman in a difficult line of work, and too much public intimacy with him could make her work impossible as people refuse to believe that Captain America’s lover could make critical decisions with a cool head.

But he wants her to know what he sees when he looks at her.

Maria is watching him, not entirely unlike a creature hypnotised. She even gives herself a kind of shake, as though he’s a glamour that she has to dispel.

“I’m not—”

“Let’s imagine something. Armed dissidents take the room hostage right this instant.”

She tilts her head. “Right now? In the middle of a Stark Industries ball?”

“Right here, right now. I bet you could get hold of a weapon within ten seconds.”

Her brow arches, and the hand on his shoulder shifts so she can smooth down an imaginary wrinkle in his collar with her thumb. “Well, yes. Of course.”

“Most people wouldn’t.”

Maria tilts her head. “Most people aren’t dancing with you.” When he gives her a blank look, she rolls her eyes. Her expression says he's being an idiot, only he doesn't see— “I literally have my hands on the best weapon in the room, Steve.”

He stares at her, speechless. 

She’s amazing.


End file.
